Analysis – There is not one specific mention of the threat posed by white supremacists or right-wing nationalism in 10 years of public documents from the Security Intelligence Service or the GCSB.

…people right now want to blame Mike Hosking, Duncan Garner and Chris Lynch for this violent act and I think that’s deeply problematic. Arguing that micro aggressions lead to genocidal rampages might make us feel better by targeting men who have in the past pissed us off with their language but if we want to stop the next Tarrent, I think it’s lazy and fearfully simplistic.

Having read Tarrent’s manifesto, it is hard core white supremacy indoctrination, one doesn’t get to that level of hatred by listening to ZB.

That’s not to say there isn’t white supremacy in NZ, oh Lord, there is. It permeates everything in this country like low level background radiation, from the broken promise of the Treaty, to taking 180 years to apologise for Parihaka, to Asian New Zealanders facing the highest level of racism week to week, to Māori incarceration rates, to Pacific Island poverty stats to Muslim woman verbally harassed on the street everyday. That racism needs to be tackled head on as part of the necessary healing we collectively require in the wake of this atrocity, but this diseased human being didn’t commit this atrocity because of Mike Hosking.

Tarrent’s hate and radicalisation is unique and the Intelligence Services have an enormous amount to explain to us how they didn’t see this threat coming, despite warnings and despite the Islamic community themselves complaining about the ratcheting up of violence.

Blaming Mike Hosking, Duncan Garner & Chris Lynch is easy and it might make us feel better, but it won’t provide us with real answers or keep us safe, that falls upon the Intelligence agencies who had a combined budget of $230m last year.

Love Aotearoa Hate Racism (LAHR) is anticipating an unprecedented turnout at our rally against Islamophobia and racism at Auckland’s Aotea Square this Sunday, March 24, at 2pm.

Organisers expect thousands to gather in a passionate and defiant display of unity following last Friday’s massacre at two mosques in Christchurch. During a week of immense sorrow, with the families of the Muslim victims preparing to bury their loved ones, LAHR organisers and volunteers have been hard at work to ensure this is one of the biggest protest Aotearoa/NZ has ever seen. There will be an extensive list of speakers, to be announced shortly.

LAHR believes that, while the shooting at the mosques was the deed of one gunman, the attack is at least in part the tragic consequence of Aotearoa’s failure to address racism within its midst. In contrast to the picture of ‘a peaceful, harmonious, tolerant’ society painted over the past week,

Aotearoa for too long has seen the scapegoating of migrants and refugees, with mainstream politicians blaming immigration for our housing and economic crisis. This has given confidence to fascist elements here and overseas, culminating in last week’s tragic and harrowing outcome.

“Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters is himself guilty of perpetuating the myth that mosques conceal a fundamentalist underbelly which poses a threat to Aotearoa. We utterly reject and condemn this anti-Muslim rhetoric,” says Joe Carolan, LAHR founding member.

Love Aotearoa Hate Racism is a coalition of unions, community, and migrant groups, which was formed last July in response to attempts by the far right to peddle their Islamophobic, anti-migrant, anti-refugee politics on New Zealand soil. In Aotea Square on July 14, a protest in support of British Nazi Tommy Robinson, with anti-Islamic placards and literature, signalled the need for a united front organisation to combat their divisive and dangerous propaganda. This was followed by LAHR organising protests in August against far-right speakers Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern speaking in our diverse biggest city, Auckland.

The outpouring of love and solidarity all over Aotearoa is something we can all take pride in. However, LAHR believes we need to act now, not just to prevent further atrocities against our Muslim brothers and sisters, but to tackle all forms of racism on our streets and in our workplaces; to bring a halt to the exploitation of migrant workers which sees them paid, in the instance of one Bottle-o franchise, as little as $7 an hour; and to tackle the racism in our midst which gives oxygen to the far right.

We believe that the only way to do this is through a united front organisation of trade unions, community and religious organisations, alongside tangata whenua.

LAHR is appealing for volunteers to help with the many tasks required to ensure the success of Sunday’s gathering. To help please contact:

As the horror of the atrocity passes from grief to rage, we need to demand hard questions from the NZ Intelligence Agencies who are supposed to protect us from this kind of extremism.

Oh the State Agencies have had time to spy on Māori, Greenpeace, Earthquake survivors, The Greens, MANA Party and Social Justice Activists, and the last SIS threat assessment went on and on about the supposed threat of Radicalised Islamists yet only mentioned the rise of white supremacy in passing as a global trend, not a specific threat to us.

The intelligence agencies are all right wing, they saw the threat to NZ from environmentalists hurting oil company profits, white supremacists weren’t even part of their threat assessment.

It is obvious from reading this mutants manifesto that the specific keyword language he is using would be picked up by a basic algorithm if white supremacy had been on a watch list.

What the Christ were the GCSB & SIS spending that $240m on last year? How could a white supremacist who crossed the border on multiple occasions to go on a tiki tour of white supremacist hot spots nit get noticed?

These agencies broke the law, illegally spied on and shut down an entire Māori township over the Urewera terrorism fiasco, yet they were blindsided by a white supremacist?

I’m not for one second suggesting we give these agencies MORE power, I’m demanding they use the existing powers they have to actually protects us from real threats, not the pretend ones they think we are threatened by.

When will someone from the SIS resign over this enormous Intelligence failure?

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/03/20/the-sis-gcsb-combined-budget-for-last-year-was-230m-how-come-they-didnt-see-a-white-supremacist-plotting-an-atrocity/feed/16Public meeting in Christchurch this Sunday, about public media and social media.https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/03/20/public-meeting-in-christchurch-this-sunday-about-public-media-and-social-media/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/03/20/public-meeting-in-christchurch-this-sunday-about-public-media-and-social-media/#respondTue, 19 Mar 2019 21:21:10 +0000https://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=112312

What’s going on with media in New Zealand?
Is Facebook out of control?
Can social media be a public service?

The role of social media is in the spotlight after the terrible events last Friday.

To raise these issues so everyone can take part in the discussion, the Better Public Media Trust is holding a public meeting this Sunday at Undercroft 101 in the University of Canterbury, Ilam Campus.

What should be the future of social media?
What’s about NZ’s public media?

Note: Previously the Hon. Kris Faafoi, Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media was to deliver the keynote speech but has pulled out due to the terrorist attack.
For more information, go to www.betterpublicmedia.org.nz

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/03/20/public-meeting-in-christchurch-this-sunday-about-public-media-and-social-media/feed/0On The National Party’s “Emotional” Indecision As To Migration Pact Petition In The Wake Of Christchurchhttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/03/20/on-the-national-partys-emotional-indecision-as-to-migration-pact-petition-in-the-wake-of-christchurch/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/03/20/on-the-national-partys-emotional-indecision-as-to-migration-pact-petition-in-the-wake-of-christchurch/#commentsTue, 19 Mar 2019 20:53:33 +0000https://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=112299

Now, in terms of my own thoughts about the above … whatever one thinks about immigration, and from wherever slash of whomever – the National Party’s claimed opposition to the UN Migration Pact has always rung so hollow, you could creatively refer to it as having achieved Nirvana [ok, well .. Sunyata; but there’s definitely no lights on inside, i’ll put it that way].

This is a party which, after all, presided over back-to-back-to-back record high immigration figures, while consciously tamping down proposals even from within its own membership to lower them [c.f. Bill English announcing such a policy .. and then walking it back a short while afterwards due to opposition from some farmers and employers] … and which had such a lackadaisical approach to the “protection of national sovereignty” and lawmaking ability which it *claimed* were core parts of its reasoning for opposing the UN Migration Pact – that it thought the ISDS provisions in the *original* #TPPA were a *good idea*. [They’re *still* not a good idea in the revised CPTPP agreement, but that is another story for another time, as best told by Professor Jane Kelsey].

Or, in other words, the Nats do not and have never really cared about the issues they purported to raise by pushing that petition.

They were doing it for mere “populist points”. Because apparently, the party which militantly blocked its own ears against the Voice of the People on, say, asset sales in the course of *that* referendum campaign … was all of a sudden going to be the People’s Microphone on a rather obscure piece of intergovernmental values-statement of little actual legal effect.

Or, to phrase it another way – this wasn’t really about “listening to New Zealanders”. it was about putting out a “YOU SHOULD BE REALLY CONCERNED ABOUT THIS” line into the polis, and then using that to try and make the Government of the day look scary, unrepresentative, and even more incredibly Globalist than the Nats themselves were for the previous nine years.

However, the risk with putting out emotive political content into the electorate … is that occasionally it comes back to bite you in the hand and/or posterior.

And that’s pretty much exactly what’s happened here.

Now I’m NOT saying that National’s stance on the Migration Pact had much, if anything, to do with Friday’s atrocity. Because it probably didn’t. The terrorist in question claimed he had a thousand years or more of history to Wikipedia his way through and/or visit in person during his European jaunt to (mis)inform his views – with the obvious implication that no help from any New Zealand politician was required.

Had National *not* attempted to oppose the Migration Pact, I cannot see how anything would have really changed.

Yet someone in National was plainly aware that the ‘optics’ of the matter … were not going to look particularly good, in the blood-tinged aftermath of our worst-ever terrorist attack. And so – whether motivated by a sense of compassion (or, as Bridges put it today, the result of being both “emotional” and possibly also “junior”), or simply a desire to limit the potential finger-pointing post-facto from a PR perspective … somebody chose to remove the petition from public view.

Now, I’m not sure quite what to make of National’s changing story on the matter. It is at least possible that the conflicting statements are simply the result of an ‘evolving informational picture’. That is to say, somebody at National HQ not understanding that “unlisted” and “not viewable to the public” are not actually the same thing. It happens.

Yet it was Bridges’ response to a question asked earlier today, as to whether actually removing the petition was the right thing to do (you know, making reality finally accord with what National thought had been the case for a few weeks now, apparently – per their earlier statement, anyway… ) – “I think the reality is we’re not going to be critical of it because, as I say it’s a junior staff member, [who was] very emotional” – that caused me to wonder if this were really the case.

That implies that otherwise, they *would* be critical of it. But also states that they *aren’t* critical of it. It is, so to speak, a bob each way – with an emphasis upon “Emotionally affected Kiwis” getting a bit of slack given recent events.

And that, I think, is very, very deliberate play from National.

They’re as-yet uncertain which way both a) public opinion in general, but also b) the rather more specific sectors of opinion in various parts of the electorate which they either claim to represent or really want to win off at least one party in particular (you know, the one you would have *thought* would perhaps be opposing said UN Migration Pact were *it* not in Government) … which way those are going to go over the coming weeks and months as we head towards the next Election Year.

They *don’t* want to make it suddenly seem like they’re bowing to “PC”, or that they’ve suddenly stopped faux-caring about national sovereignty or immigration policy settings. That’d lose them the Talkback Brigade, and suchlike.

But they’re *also* acutely conscious that, for a pretty appreciably broad swathe of “Middle New Zealand” [often, but not always, where elections are actually won and lost – in those instances wherein they aren’t won by tactically nuking NZ First and/or other support parties] – Friday’s events represent something of a watershed in which the previously not-entirely-un-acceptable approach to speaking with perhaps outright concern about “Islam” , may now wind up being looked at with very different eyes, indeed.

About the only thing that *everybody* can agree upon, is that Friday’s literally atrocious events, have represented a considerable shock and emotive impact to both the collective and individual psyches of New Zealanders.

So any ‘inconsistency’ on National’s part .. well, “we’ll just chalk it up to that, then.”

In a curious bit of irony, that’s probably the closest thing we’re likely to see to empathy from Simon Bridges in a press conference, during the entirety of his (remaining) run as National Party Leader.

But I digress.

The point, I suppose, is that we have known for a long time now that National (and, to be fair, other parties too, especially when consigned to the relative discomforting boredom of Opposition), have long ago ceased in believing in acting as a genuine conveyor of polis opinion unto the corridors of power. Instead, they’ve “outsourced” that, to PR companies, lobbyists, and focus-groups. Which is rather like presuming that an elevator-muzak or cellphone ringtone version of a great opera is much the same thing, at best.

And often, instead, seems to be exactly the other way around to “representing public opinion”; rather becoming far more actively interested in “representing [often pre-formed] elite opinion to the public”.

Hence why you need the PR companies involved. And the lobbyists, to make sure you know just *which* ‘elites’ you should be listening to the loudest.

Now, there’s no “script” for what’s going on at the moment in New Zealand politics. Not really. I mean, there’s general platitudes, and there’s an array of foreign case-studies that are being cited about the place [the Howard Government in Australia pushing through firearms controls being Exhibit A upon everybody’s lips, it would seem] …. but just four days after the Atrocity in question, it’s *far* too soon to tell how things are likely to unfold.

Hell, there hasn’t even been time to start focus-grouping or whatever it is that the Nats do when they’re trying to figure out which way to arc a long-term policy/political trajectory on something potentially divisive. Or what colour ties Simon Bridges should wear. Or how long Judith Collins should spend outside of Cabinet following a corruption-tinged teacup-milk-scandal. Or the precise differential value of an Indian MP versus a Chinese MP for the sake of donation soliciting purposes. Etc. ETc. Etc.

So in the absence of anything hard or reliable [inasmuch as political opinion about anything ever actually is] to go upon, they’ve instead adopted a creative non-stance that *might look like* something else, in at least two directions. And which endeavours to hit the mid-point of the intersecting Venn Diagram with an ’emotive’ impact, regardless.

Very clever, in its own way. I wonder who wrote that for ’em.

As applies National actually deciding which way it’s going to go upon this, and quite a number of other somewhat related issues … I suspect we’re going to be left wondering for awhile yet. The dust takes time to clear on these things, which is what is required in order to perceive the best “optics” for the situation.

The National party are not, by instinct, these days “leaders” – they are “managers”.

Which is, one could argue, exactly the wrong set of priorities and proclivities, for an emergent and paradigm-reshaping [at least here in NZ politics] event such as this.

Now here is a curious thing. According to yesterday’s Herald, Turkish President Erdogan, is using footage of Friday’s atrocity as part of his party’s ads for a currently occurring suite of elections being held in Turkey…

Turkish President President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has invoked the Anzacs’ Gallipoli campaign in World War I in responding to the mosque attacks in Christchurch, saying anyone who went to Turkey for anti-Muslim reasons would be returned “in coffins”, as their grandfathers were.

In some ways, it is not surprising that the attack would have such a resonance in Turkish politics – after all, the shooter, a self-declared ‘Turkophage’, was quite vocal about said country, and repeatedly singled out Erdogan himself for threat of death.

Yet the ads come at a time when New Zealand authorities have been rather busy seeking to clamp down upon the dissemination of the video as Objectionable Material; and we have already seen at least one New Zealander in court for it [although to be sure, it’s likely that some of his *other* postings at roughly the same time, may have ‘tipped the balance’ toward full-scale enforcement action], as well as, I am given to understand, an array of what are, effectively, ‘cease-and-desist’ notices sent out to foreign entities demanding that they halt any hosting or distribution of the materials in question immediately or face further legal consequence.

My question is a simple one: will we be *also* attempting the same thing in the direction of the AKP? [Erdogan’s party]

When the Nuremberg trials occurred, it was essential to those prosecuting that the trial not only found the Nazi’s guilty, but proved them wrong for history and progressive humanity’s sake – that Brenton Tarrant intends to defend himself shouldn’t surprise anyone, people with this level of psychopathic murderous intent tend to be narcissists, but we shouldn’t fear him using the trail as a platform, we should relish it as the opportunity to not only find him guilty of a heinous atrocity, but to undeniably crush his justifications and arguments.

Wanting to censor the trial or hide his words is a natural response but we are being tested globally and our justice system is strong and our values deeper than his sophistry of hate. We have nothing to fear standing in the light and dragging him into it. In fact, it’s our obligation to do so.

On the failure of our Intelligence Agencies:

Having read the manifesto, it is abundantly clear that his specific use of keywords would have been picked up by algorithm if NZ intelligence apparatus had been searching for white supremacists instead of seeing Māori, Environmentalists, the MANA Party, the Greens and Greenpeace as the threat.

I don’t want the SIS gaining more power, I just want them using the existing powers towards real threats.

On the Blame Game:

The current game on twitter of ‘you-fed-hate-so-you’re-responsible-for-the-murder-of-50-people’ is neat but it utterly misses where the actual responsibility lies:

Beyond those two, Whaleoil has some real soul searching over their hate speech of Muslims and the National Party for endorsing the UN conspiracy but the exact worst way to combat white supremacy is a vast censoring of every right wing opinion you disagree with.

That’s not to say there isn’t white supremacy in NZ, oh Lord, there is. It permeates everything in this country like low level background radiation, from the broken promise of the Treaty, to taking 180 years to apologise for Parihaka, to Asian New Zealanders facing the highest level of racism week to week, to Māori incarceration rates, to Pacific Island poverty stats to Muslim woman verbally harassed on the street everyday. That racism needs to be tackled head on as part of the necessary healing we collectively require in the wake of this atrocity, but this diseased human being didn’t commit this atrocity because of Mike Hosking.

White supremacy breeds into violence when it’s forced underground. I did my first TV interview with NeoNazis in NZ in the late 1990s on The Drum, these are damaged and warped individuals who need their ideology debunked by debate not empowered via deplatforming.

This diseased mutation of an individual picked NZ not because we are a nerve centre of white supremacy and hate, but because we were the exact opposite of that and our collective sadness and anguish at such hatred shows we are more than this event and that while it must shape us to do better and be better, we can not allow it to define us.

Sitting at church yesterday, I felt an overwhelming sense of pain and despair at the animal-like murder, of people who had gathered to pray. Seated in the middle pew of our church, clutching the hand of my wife on one side and my daughter on the other, I began to think of the how blessed we were to be at church, in a posture of trust, honesty, calm and vulnerability. Our Pastor struggled to find the words following the introit, in gathering our thoughts in the call to worship. We found comfort in one another as prayed for those who had lost their lives, their families and friends, devastated communities and a soul-searching nation.

Over the past few days I’ve been fascinated by the number of times I’ve seen the phrase ‘this is not us’ posted on social media and the many people I’ve spoken with. There seems to be a level of surprise by many interviewed on the news and posts online that something as terrible as this, could happen in NZ. Media outlets have been quick to point out that the perpetrator was born in Australia, as if that subtle attempt to place blame away or outside of a certain group, will help us grieve.

The Prime Minister’s leadership during these dark days has been outstanding. She has reached out to the nation with words and actions to exhibit the very compassion needed at this time. She has also made bold statements to advise that attitudes and practices in this small nation, must change. And while the pain is still raw and deep, we must continue to find the appropriate words, actions and even silence to comfort those who mourn.

One political leader said that he felt despair on the day these sinister events took place. But looking out at a gathered crowd, he felt a sense of hope. I wish I could share that hope. I wish I could feel that same level of optimism. But I don’t.

Stories of Muslim women being yelled at to go back to their countries continue to emerge. Posts online of people yelling at ‘dark-skinned’ individuals cheering at this despicable act of last week surface. And this is just the outward manifestation of the racism in NZ. It has been insidious for years. The term unconscious bias is the nice, polite way to describe the way in which the brain reacts to difference. And in the main, difference is the colour of your skin and gender. That difference is picked up by the eye immediately and it feeds that information directly to the brain. Then judgements are made about who is in, and who is out.

I don’t share that same sense of hope because people from minority backgrounds continue to exist from the periphery. It may well be the desire of the dominant culture to feel a sense of hope, because it may well be a way to manage internalized feelings of guilt. I don’t know. What I do know is that the most vulnerable voices in our community have little voice around key decision-making tables. The Children’s Commissioners office identified the racism kids feel at school and if it’s ingrained at that age, the structures won’t change in a hurry. I don’t share that same notion of hope because of how my own family was treated at my inauguration.

Our first action to bring about real hope, is to listen. For those who have always had access to decision-making tables and resource. Listen. Be quiet and listen. Don’t judge. Don’t categorise. Don’t question. Don’t speak. Just listen. And then think about doing something even more daring. Give up your seat. Make way. Invite another person different to you, to take your seat. Get out of the way. All weekend we’ve heard the stats about being a country of more than 200 ethnicities and 160 languages, but access to power remains limited; extremely limited. Fluffy political speeches have had their day. It’s time for real action based on humility and generosity.

We visited the beautiful Al-Mustafa Jamia Masjid mosque in Otahuhu yesterday. An armed police officer stood at the front gate as sad but necessary reminder of the awful attack only a couple of days earlier. The leaders of the mosque came to the gate to hug, greet and thank us for coming. As we slowly and somberly walked to the entrance of the mosque, we all reflected on recent events. Inside, we were warmly welcomed and thanked. And immediately, they gave us the chance to speak. To share. To give. We were on their land, inside their mosque, their place of prayer. And they gave us the chance to speak first. And they listened intently to our shared sadness and brokenness. Then they comforted us.

It was heartwarming to be part of such a big and diverse crowd in Auckland’s Aotea Square yesterday standing in solidarity with the Islamic community after the terrible massacre in Christchurch. There were many passionate speeches highlighting the need to come together to fight racism and Islamophobia.

Many New Zealanders have picked up Jacinda Ardern’s theme “this is not us” but unfortunately this message is only partly true. Islamophobia is deeply embedded in our society. Former Race Relations commissioner Susan Devoy says that “every single Muslim woman I know has faced racist abuse of some kind right here in our towns, on Facebook, in the media.”

In order to deal with this we have to understand where New Zealand’s Islamophobia comes from, and what sustains it. It goes a long way back. Settlers in colonial New Zealand were deeply Islamophobic and white supremacist. Our white settlers saw themselves as superior to the “dark” people in the Muslim world and they treated Christianity as the only true religion. New Zealand supported Britain’s wars in the Middle East and south Asia in the 19th and 20th centuries. These wars continue up until today, but with Britain now playing a subordinate role to the United States.

The white supremacist and Islamophobic message presented today is that Islam is a violent religion, or at least has the capacity to take a violent form, and this has to be combated by the intervention of Western powers. This is the excuse given for Western military action in several Islamic nations including Libya, Somalia, the Yemen, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Of course, there have been violent and extreme political currents in some of these Islamic countries, often generating a public flowing from their opposition to corrupt (Western-backed) governments, or their opposition to foreign military intervention. Now we are in a vicious circle of foreign intervention begetting jihadism, and jihadism begetting foreign intervention, and so it goes on. And that has set off another vicious circle with the Islamophobia in Western nations upsetting the local Muslim community, motivating a few extreme elements to commit violent acts, which results in more Islamophobia, and so it goes around.

Whether consciously or not, successive New Zealand governments have helped foster this modern Islamophobia by participating in the American-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and not speaking out against Western military action in places like the Yemen, Libya and Somalia. The Western propaganda around those wars has fostered prejudice towards Muslims living in New Zealand.

If we really want to combat Islamophobia and white nationalism we should withdraw our remaining soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan and not participate further in America’s wars in Islamic countries.

We should also withdraw from the Five Eyes, and intelligence network based on the white supremacist premise that five “anglo” nations (the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) have the right to spy on every other nation. The Five Eyes operates mainly in the interests of Donald Trump’s America helping him, for example, to implement his Islamophobic ban on the citizens of several Islamic nations entering the United States. It should be noted that the killer in Christchurch, Brenton Tarrant, called Trump “a symbol of renewed white identity” in his manifesto justifying the massacre.

Given the Islamophobic ethos of Western intelligence agencies, led by the United States, we should be against strengthening our anti-terrorist laws or allowing more intrusive state surveillance. Such an approach won’t help the Muslim community.

The reality is that the longstanding Crimes Act, which has been used to charge the current offender, covers all cases of murder, kidnapping, bombing and membership of a criminal group. Separate anti-terrorism legislation is clearly unnecessary. The only (failed) attempt to use the existing Terrorism Suppression Act has been against local dissenters, in the Operation 8 case.

One takeaway from the Christchurch massacre seems to be that a violent act by a “lone wolf” is very hard to detect. Rather than move towards a surveillance society, our resources would be better devoted to promoting community tolerance and the understanding of diverse cultures. Reducing the prevalence of Islamophobia in our society is the best path to take.

Sorry, I`m not up to a full analytical assessment of the Mosque shootings in Christchurch. I`m still processing the pain and anguish felt by families of the killed and wounded. Still, I have some random thoughts and observations to share.

First up, let’s call things by their proper names. If this was terrorism in action then why are some news outlets calling it a `tragedy` or a series of `tragic events`? What happened was an atrocity; an attack on humanity as humanity.

On Friday the first analogy that came to mind was the Nazi massacre of Lithuanian Jewish communities in the early 1940s. Yet it is dangerously simplistic to depict acts of terror as acts of hate. The Christchurch killings were the acts of a fully indoctrinated white supremacist, hate was the emotional channel not the cause.

Worldwide, various forcefields of hateful ideology feed off each other. Pro- ISIS ideology and atrocities trigger the Anders Breiviks and Brenton Tarrants of this world and vica-versa.

This brings me to another random thought.

Where were the intelligence services of Australia and New Zealand?

Since the 2011 Breivik massacres in Norway far –right extremist manifestoes and talking points have spread across websites, chatrooms and the dark net. Furthermore, as we now know, Donald Trump`s rhetoric has emboldened white supremacist, neo-nazi hate groups, a point revealed by Tarrant himself.

Has the SIS , the GCSB and their Australian partners noticed any of this?

I feel sad about the consequences for New Zealand. An array of see-it-perfectly well social liberals will advocate the restriction of free speech from those they disagree with. Without question, Tarrant`s manifesto should be taken down, it clearly incites and celebrates violence against others. However, less extreme yet noxious ideas should not be automatically banned from the internet or public meetings.

Driving these ideas and prejudices underground will make it harder for our intelligence services to monitor far right activities in order to cut off the next Brenton Tarrant.

Depressingly, security details at mosques will become a necessary fact of life. New Zealand`s peaceful distance from sectarian terror has been shattered, a primary objective of the Christchurch Mosque attacks.

A final observation and question.

Why did it take Facebook 17 minutes to take down the killer`s live video. Here is an answer- understaffed, underpaid, under trained content moderators along with a business model which generates revenue from vivid atrocities. The millions who go online to follow and share the footage, before Facebook belatedly deletes it, create monetisable content for advertisers and market researchers.

In short, mediated carnage plus voyeurism equals profit for social media corporations and notoriety for terrorists.

The terrorist attack on the Christchurch mosques by a right-wing fanatic has exposed a dark network of white supremacist, islamophobic, anti-immigrant and misogynist people and movements that want to destroy all progressive aspects in the advance of humanity.

These networks openly admire US President Trump and other right-wing ideologues because their hatreds and fears are being manipulated by these same “establishment” forces. When Trump says “I think Islam hates us” and “Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in,” referring to the migrant caravan from South America to the US, and bans migrants from “Muslim countries” the message of hate and bigotry is clear.

Political “leaders” throughout the so-called Western world – the advanced capitalist countries in North America, Europe, Japan and Australasia, echo or amplify these sentiments and set loose the demons that attacked Christchurch

These are also the countries that made themselves rich by exploiting the wealth of the so-called “developing” world and looted their human and mineral resources to become the richest nations on earth.

Islamaphobic prejudice has become a dominant narrative for the right wing and racist forces, in part because it is a useful tool used by the rulers of the US and its “allies” – including New Zealand on some occasions- to provide political cover to their wars of empire across the globe in recent decades.

Millions of lives have been lost as the US and its allies waged war on Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria and supported proxy wars on Yemen, Somalia, Sudan. This slaughter has happened because this region holds most of the world’s oil supplies and for no other reason.

The recent attacks on Venezuela are because they have oil, but also because they have begun to try and talk about the socialist alternative – a 21stCentury socialism – that the world now desperately needs. Venezuela is subject to slander and lies of a different sort as well of course to justify these attacks and we should also be showing that country the solidarity it needs to survive.

Millions of more lives have been displaced as people flee these “failed states” in search of refuge only to be denied entry, detained, or simply allowed to drown in the Mediterranean Sea and off Australia’s coast, or die of dehydration crossing the Mexican border.

During this same period of never-ending wars, world capitalism suffered its deepest international economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Austerity became the order of the day throughout the advanced capitalist world as unemployment boomed while budgets for health, welfare and education were being cut. Blaming the refugee or migrant for these economic calamities became a familiar refrain for the right-wing parties and movements.

That is what makes the Islamophobia such a powerful tool. It is a weapon to serve the needs of a war-mongering profit-seeking system and way of keeping the oppressed and exploited people of the world, fighting among ourselves instead of against our common enemy – the ruling 1% in these advanced capitalist countries.

We need to do more, much more to challenge all forms of bigotry and hatred. This includes on a personal level calling out anyone and everyone who peddles the lies and hatreds. It means physically protecting where necessary any people that are being targetted for abuse for their race, religion, ethnicity, sex or gender.

But we also need to mobilise in New Zealand to repudiate this attack and tell the world we will not be divided or terrorised by this attack into despair or surrender.

The government must declare a national day of mourning for those killed. This was done after the Christchurch earthquake and these people deserve no less.

But the union movement, churches, and migrant communities should take this day as an opportunity to go onto the streets in our hundreds of thousands with actions in every town and city across New Zealand to declare our “Peace, Love and Solidarity” with our Muslim brothers and sisters, that we reject all forms of racism, Islamophobia, bigotry and hatred towards any part of our community.

I’m taking my 9 year old daughter to the climate protest today, which means she’s wagging a day from school.

The moment she knew about the protest, she demanded that her not going wasn’t an option open to debate.

Her certainty was surprising.

She does her homework in front of the News while I make dinner most nights and she peppers the evening with question after question about what she has seen and climate change is always a topic at our dinner table.

The anger she feels that her future environment will be polluted while little gets changed now is righteous and one I can’t disagree with.

To tell her to stay in school when the biggest threat to her future is being protested against would make me a hypocrite and in my opinion a lousy father.

We adults have done a crap job of combating climate change, over half the emissions have been generated in the last 25 years alone and I refuse to allow my daughter to carry the environmental sins of my generation without helping her take that weight.

This was written the morning of the shooting. It seems like a distant shore now.

“Standing beside our Muslim brothers and sisters” … a placard at the Aotea Square vigil on Saturday. Image: David Robie/PMC

OPINION: By Sasya Wreksono of the Pacific Media Centre

In the 20 years I’ve lived in New Zealand since I was little, I’ve never felt unsafe or been discriminated against for being an immigrant or for my beliefs as a Muslim. I’ve always felt grateful for being able to live in a country where people are generally kind, warm and understanding.

Going on road trips with my family around the country, if we couldn’t pray at a mosque we would pray where we could – at train stations, in fields, on the side of the road. While working on set or on location I would pray out in the open.

But just because I’ve never personally experienced discrimination here, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. As much as I love New Zealand and as amazing as it is, it’s far from perfect – because nothing is.

This is a country that was built on colonialism, that disregards its native Te Reo Māori language as inferior and that scorns immigrants for rising house prices and decreasing job opportunities.

This little country of ours is known around the world for being a clean, green, warm and welcoming safe haven. While I myself have never experienced otherwise, perhaps underneath the surface there’s always been a fragment of darkness that’s now manifested in the ugliest way imaginable – a piece we clearly now need to acknowledge and change.

Thank you to my fellow Kiwis for their outpouring of support for the Muslim community, especially for those directly affected. We mourn, but we should also reflect and figure out how we can ensure something like this never happens again.

What happened on Friday was appallingly, disgustingly atrocious. While we undoubtedly need to hold alt-right politicians and commentators around the West accountable for pushing the rhetoric of white supremacy and Islamophobia, in turn cultivating bigotry and hatred, we can still do something here at home.

Celebrate our similarities
We need to acknowledge our history and celebrate our similarities, not our differences.

Sasya Wreksono is a New Zealand filmmaker from an Indonesian family who migrated many years ago to this country to make Auckland their home. She is a screen production graduate from Auckland University of Technology. This commentary was originally published on her Facebook account and has been republished by the Pacific Media Centre with her permission.

BRENTON TARRANT isn’t one of us. He may have been born in Australia, but he isn’t really an Australian either. If his own words are any guide, he identifies himself, above and beyond all other considerations, as White. Like so many of the horrors currently disfiguring our world, Brenton Tarrant’s crimes are an expression of pure and murderous racism.

He came here a couple of years ago to plan and to prepare for action in another part of the world, most likely in the United States. Once here, however, he appears to have changed his mind. Something about New Zealand, most probably our acute vulnerability to the sort of terrorist attack he was planning, convinced him that shots fired here would be heard around the world.

New Zealanders have nothing to reproach themselves for in relation to the horrific attack on the two Christchurch mosques. We must not for one moment entertain the notion that there was something we could have done to stop Tarrant. Lone wolf terrorists of his sort are not produced by the ignorant racist mutterings of gun club members. Nor are they inspired by the rantings and ravings of social media. That’s not how it works.

All the literature points to this sort of terrorism being born of real, geopolitical events. Indeed, if the perpetrators could not locate their murderous racist impulses within a global context, then the scale of their ambitions would be commensurately smaller. The ravages of Western and Soviet imperialism, and the asymmetrical resistance launched by the victims of that aggression, have been the drivers of global terrorist extremism for more than a century.

We didn’t start that fire.

It is no accident that one of the heroes of the rambling 73-page “manifesto” which Tarrant posted online is Anders Breivik – the Norwegian white supremacist who murdered 72 of his fellow citizens in 2011. Like Breivik, Tarrant locates himself in a phantasmagorical world of evil invaders and righteous defenders. At stake is nothing less than the survival of the “white race”.

Those who enter this fever dream are utterly inaccessible to reason. And it is precisely this inaccessibility that makes the weaponised hate of Breivik and Tarrant so dangerous. In the memorable line from the first Terminator movie: “[I]t can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop.”

That such individuals are psychologically damaged is axiomatic. No individual capable of empathy can murder men, women and children with the robotic efficiency of a Breivik or a Tarrant. Inevitably, the subsequent psychological assessment of these individuals throws up a toxic mixture of sociopathic cruelty and extreme narcissism. The injustice and suffering unfolding in the real world is reinterpreted by the defective personalities of these lone wolf terrorists as something which is happening not to others – but to themselves. They take it personally. Far from being “the continuation of politics by other means”, their terrorism is a savage quest for vengeance.

As the dreadful events of Friday, 15 March 2019 were unfolding, I couldn’t help recalling the words of King Theoden in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. As his fortress of Helm’s Deep is on the point of being over-run, he asks despairingly: “What can men do against such reckless hate?”

That is now the question which New Zealand must ask of itself.

Part of the answer, the most important part, we have already seen. In the floral tributes outside the nation’s mosques. In the images of the imam and the rabbi embracing each other. In the Pasifika voices raised in a hymn of heart-breaking poignance. In the Maori and Pakeha faces wet with tears, yet set in grim defiance. In the passionate cry of the massacre survivor: “This is not New Zealand!” In the nearly $5 million already raised to support the victims’ families. The answer already given by the people of New Zealand, united in grief, is unequivocal: When confronted with such reckless hate, the only possible answer is aroha – love.

The wrong answer; the answer the terrorist is always hoping the strategic targets of his rage will give; is to meet recklessness with recklessness; hate with hate.

While the ruins of the Twin Towers were still smoking, the American people shackled themselves to the Patriot Act: voluntarily curtailing the very freedoms the Al Qaida terrorists were condemned for attacking.

The contrast between the American response to 9/11, and the Norwegian Government’s response to Breivik, could hardly be more striking. At a memorial service in Oslo Cathedral, the Norwegian Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, declared: “We must not allow this attack to hurt Norwegian democracy: the proper answer to such violence is more democracy, more openness … No one has said it better than the [young woman] who was interviewed by CNN: ‘If one man can show so much hate, think how much love we could show, standing together.’”

It is to be hoped that our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, allows herself to be guided by Stoltenberg’s example. To date, her handling of the Christchurch tragedy has been faultless. Her sole policy response, an uncompromising pledge to reform New Zealand’s gun laws, was focused, measured and appropriate. It will be an uphill struggle for any person or lobby group foolish enough to oppose her call for stricter regulation of firearms – especially of the semi-automatic weapons that made Tarrant’s attack so costly.

The Prime Minister will, doubtless, come under increasing pressure from angry and misguided persons to curtail the rights of New Zealanders articulating unpopular views concerning Maori-Pakeha relations, the Islamic religion, multiculturalism and immigration policy. In defence of the liberal-democratic values that Tarrant assaulted so violently, Jacinda should calmly resist all such calls. We must not allow the unanimity of our grief to be translated into a demand for unanimity of opinion.

New Zealand has been horribly scarred by a fanatical follower of the international white supremacist movement. He hid among us in plain sight, masking his murderous intentions from his Dunedin neighbours, the Police, the SIS and the GCSB – until it was too late. Brenton Tarrant is a lone wolf terrorist who took advantage of everything that is good about New Zealand to perpetrate a devastating act of homicidal violence against defenceless Muslim worshippers. He could not have been stopped – except by the most extraordinary stroke of good fortune. And, at 1:40 pm, on Friday, 15 March 2019, New Zealand’s luck ran out.

What happened at the Linwood and Al Noor mosques was horrific, but it wasn’t our doing. As we begin the long journey towards recovery, it is vitally important that we keep that fact squarely before us. New Zealand is a good place. New Zealanders are good people. We are not responsible for Brenton Tarrant’s dreadful crime. This is not us.

The National Party, sensing the enormous political backlash once the grief turns to anger, have quietly removed their far right online petition attacking the UN…

…let’s remind everyone what it originally looked like…

…so after National embarked upon a far right conspiracy about the UN we had the co-leader of the Greens punched by a man yelling angry things about the UN and we had this diseased human being scrawl messages about the UN on his guns…

…it’s not appropriate to raise these issues now as bodies are being buried but when our sorrow turns to fury, the National Party of NZ have an enormous amount of explaining to do about why they championed this far right conspiracy and gave it oxygen because their words and their race baiting politicisation have had real life impact.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/03/17/twitter-watch-national-party-sensing-the-political-backlash-about-to-explode-on-them-quietly-remove-far-right-un-conspiracy/feed/9How amazing has Jacinda been under this pressure? This is what political leadership looks likehttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/03/17/how-amazing-has-jacinda-been-under-this-pressure-this-is-what-political-leadership-looks-like/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/03/17/how-amazing-has-jacinda-been-under-this-pressure-this-is-what-political-leadership-looks-like/#commentsSat, 16 Mar 2019 19:36:12 +0000https://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=112198

‘I can tell you one thing right now. Our gun laws will change’, right from the start Jacinda has shows what real leadership looks like.

From the moment this tragedy started, to right now, she has calmed a frightened and angry nation in a way few others could and she has shown an empathy that has led.

She has shown a grace and compassion that has helped us all weep. This is what true political leadership looks like.

She’s has truly earned the title, ‘Right Honourable’ in the last 2 days hasn’t she?

In a lot of the angry debate swirling right now, please let us remember that this diseased human chose Christchurch BECAUSE NZ is a peaceful progressive multi-cultural society, this violence IS NOT a reflection of us, we were targeted because we are good.

That’s not to say there isn’t much Islamaphobia we need to stamp out, that blogs like Whaleoil with their constant Muslim Hate, David Moffett and the New Conservatives language of violence and a rise of the far right aren’t concerns, but we weren’t targeted because this is us, quite the opposite and we need to remember that as we move forward because while this atrocity must change us, it will not define us.